The cynical and sarcastic musings of an orphan twenty-something

Then again, so is the fifth year of anything — a new home, a career, a marriage (presumably).

Mom’s fifth birthday beyond this realm last month felt like a bad hangover. The kind where you’re perpetually nauseous for eight to ten hours but not nearly enough to actually expel any of the toxins making a home out of your insides. The fifth anniversary of her death this fall will likely feel like a karate kick to the gut. The kind that does make you vomit.

The fifth Mother’s Day, though, is tricky.

Less than one-third of the day in, I’d say it’s sort of like a shower that won’t decide if it wants to be hot or if it wants to be the kind of cold that makes your shoulders touch your ears. There are moments of icy sting (like the first few dozen social media posts full of moms who’re still out there mothering or the influx of last minute Mother’s Day e-mails promoting everything from flowers to discounted patio furniture) and there are moments of lukewarm calmness (like deciding whether or not to take out the garbage) that meld together to make Mother’s Day just like any other shower, and just like any other Sunday.

The texts from loved ones still roll in, though, thankfully, with far less of a worried urgency than in years past. You insist on manning the morning coffee run instead of your significant other because, “Seriously love, I don’t mind.” There are no plans to be had, and it’s not because the thought of getting dressed and going outside is comparable to walking a mile on Legos barefoot. It’s just because you haven’t made any. And that’s okay.

Some years, Mother’s Day feels like a speed bump. Others, it is Everest.

This year feels somewhat like Mount Wycheproof, the smallest registered mountain in the world. Standing at just 486 feet somewhere in Australia, it is small and it is conquerable.

My editor. My new PCP. My live-in boyfriend and love of my life[1]. Our new cat. His family. My new favorite barista. And so on.

She’ll also never meet my good girlfriend Tiffany, with whom she unknowingly shared a birthday (we met within the first year of her death — that time period is hazy, but I know we drank a lot of white wine and sang a lot of 00’s alternative to each other from across the bar[2]). She smokes American Spirits and wears bright red lip stain and takes good care of me. She also takes no shit. Mom would’ve loved her.

Going out for Tiffany’s birthday is always tricky. Its like rolling a dice, except five sides of the dice say I cry and only one says I go home and happily eat pizza. (I was never very good at gambling.)

This year, feeling particularly unlucky, I struggled with the idea of leaving my apartment.

Do I really want to risk telling someone to go fuck themselves? My period is coming. And my boobs hurt. And I’m tired. And I miss my mom. But it’s Tiffany. And this is getting old. What will people think? I should probably stay the fuck away from gin[3].

I toyed with the idea for the better part of the day; pacing, snuggling Sadie, ignoring the problem, and exhaustively repeating the process until both Sadie and I were over it.

Finally, I’d come to a decision: Maybe…just maybe…I’ll sit this one out. I’ll go say hi and I’ll hug Tiffany and then I’ll bow out and get some pizza. Suck on that, you stupid dice.

Then my phone buzzed. It was a friend and former co-worker, her iMessage a photo of a framed print at home in a small Pennsylvania gift shop. Gray, to match our living room, it read: “Love you more” in all white — Mom and I’s thing, second to none other than the last seven minutes of Dirty Dancing.

“Saw this and thought of u.”

I cried (a little early, albeit, for Tiffany’s birthday celebrations), picked myself up (with absolutely no help from Sadie — she is dangerously cute and cuddly) and got myself in the shower because, even four Aprils later, I’m still celebrating Mom’s birthday.

Apparently, she wants me to.

(Sixty-four would’ve looked damn good on her.)

[1] Nothing breaks my heart like this one. He is a treasure.

[2] She also shares a birthday with the local bar Tiffany and I met in, but that is neither here nor there.

See: spiders, vest-less roller-coasters and falling out of cars mid-turn (to name a few).

But, for some odd reason, I’ve never been scared of relationships, even when both history and bad television say I should be. I’ve never been afraid to give my all to another person — be it a friend, a family member or a shiny new significant other with whom I’ve barely unpacked all of my emotional baggage. It’s how I’m wired. It’s what I do, and I do it well (depending on your definition of well and, of course, your threshold for personal space).

Sure, with that instinct to give often comes the need to expect; to desire just as much, if not more, from a partner than I feel I am shelling out so effortlessly to them. But, in the years since my last relationship (yes, I did say years), I’ve worked on that. I like to think that, by now, I’ve grasped the idea of balance and subdued my crazy* (at least well enough not to startle suiters and — perhaps above all else — well enough to actually enjoy the everyday thrills of being with somebody you love and adore). In other words, I’ve gotten my shit together — or so I hope.

After all, dating is like riding a bike, right?

Only the bike has a cute face and a full beard and tells you you’re beautiful and texts you good morning.

Though, this time last last year, I found myself head over both heels and at least a little nervous that the chain was going to snap. And it was only semi margarita-drunk that I was able to come to terms with why.

It was a Tuesday. I was stuffed to the brim with burrito and sobbing at the thought of how happy I was. For the first time in my life, I have found a boy who makes me smile in the morning, even when I haven’t heard from him in a bit because he occasionally works while I sleep and vice versa. One whose touch turns my mind to pudding, my body to jello and my thoughts to some foreign language I’ve only heard in movies. One who came from so far out of left field that I’m still convinced he isn’t real and one who, for the first time in my life, I cannot ever bring home to at least one of my parents.

There’d been a peach-sized pit in my stomach since our first date that I couldn’t quite shake until that Tuesday (and I couldn’t put into the proper words ’til now). Turns out, that pit was not a food baby, nor a kidney stone, but worry. It just took a little tequila to present itself.

Letting others in when you’ve known the gravity of grief is tricky because, point blank, learning to love when you’ve lost is hard as all hell.

There is a constant trepidation that, at any given moment, the rug will be ripped out from underneath you, because it has been before; That tomorrow he might be gone, not because he isn’t the real deal, but because those who at one time meant the most to you have left without warning before.

And this is not a reflection of this new person, because, heaven knows you don’t think he’s an asshole. Quite the opposite, actually. You know damn well that he would never leave you for dead (pun entirely unintended), no matter how many gin-provoked fights you pick. But still, there remains the ever-present, gnawing reminder that nothing gold can stay.

Though, on the other, only-half-as-morbid hand, if death teaches us anything at all, it’s that life is short. Way too short to be scared. Especially of what is real and what is wonderful and what is actuallyfucking good.

Alas, instead of meeting my father (who died when I was seventeen and only ever got to thoroughly question two of my high school sweethearts), my new beau found himself up against ten or so guy friends with just as high — if not higher — expectations. And, instead of my mother (who died just over three years ago, but somehow lived through the fiery hell-on-earth that was my mid-college breakup), he was welcomed with open arms — and chilled shots of Patron — by my Swift-esque girl gang.

Moral of the story, he was baptized by fire and hard liquor at the hands of my family of friends and that’s alright, too. Even my cousin’s five-year-old gave her seal of approval.

A friend of mine once advised me to think of this thing called love less like riding a bike, and more like something I would never in a million years agree to do unless drugged or paid an astronomical amount of money.

“Think of it like people think of skydiving. A thrill. Feeling very alive for a moment in time. Maybe forever. Maybe until you splat on the ground because you wound up with one of those parachutes that was actually a backpack with a comical list of items inside, i.e. anvil, pots and pans, rubber chicken, etc. But dig it until you can’t.”

One year later, I can safely say: No anvils here. And I can definitely still dig it.

* I once berated a college boyfriend for showing up to a house party in the same shirt as another girl. No, I am not kidding. Yes, publicly. (If you’re reading this, I am still sorry.)

Some writers pen about parenthood (be it to a child, children [plural] or a Labrador Retriever) — others, about their carefully mapped out fitness journeys (#newyearnewme). Some bloggers chronicle the newest season of their favorite television show — others, their worst first dates.

I, however, dabble in death.

Sure, I sometimes venture outside the box (be it with a piece on living life below the poverty line, or on failed OkCupid courtship), but it almost always circles back to that D-word.

(You know the one I’m talking about.)

My first experience with death was in the fifth grade.

Just two weeks before I was to deliver the salutatorian speech at my elementary school graduation*, my only living grandparent — Loretta Carcaterra (nee: Johnston) — kicked the bucket on her 80th birthday.Her passing — though, by no means unexpected — rattled my world to its core (which, at the time, pretty much revolved around gel pens and whether or not the next Disney Channel Original Movie would star Ryan Merriman).

But, above all, it set a precedent:

People get old, and then they die.

But, how old is old? For most of my life, the magic number was 80.

When my father died, the bar lowered to 66.

Another one by no means unexpected — and yet, another one that uprooted my life (which, at this time, hinged on hair bleach and Mike’s Hard Lemonade) and violently shook it around as if it were a souvenir snow globe.

Five years later, cancer and pneumonia tag-teamed my 59-year-old mother and that number dropped again (as did my jaw and tolerance for other people’s shit — but that’s neither here nor there).

My world as I knew it (which, at this time, consisted of student loans, trying not to lose my keys and other vague introductions to adulthood) was over. By the ripe age of 22, I’d not only lost both of my parents, but I’d also lost my grip on just how long a person is expected to live until — one day — they just stop doing that.

Two years later, any handle I had left on the circle of life was thrown to the wind when a friend of mine’s mother dropped dead at 44. Devastated — both for her and for her younger brother, set to celebrate his tenth birthday that same weekend — I reached for the phone. I (frantically and spastically) typed, backspaced and crafted again long, drawn-out novels of support.

Words of love. Words of wisdom. And then, words of anger.

“What the actual fuck is going on?”

– A real text I probably sent

Life as she knew it had changed forever and — somehow — so had mine again.

We talked wakes and cemeteries and the harsh reality of pity invites until our thumbs went numb. We talked finances and forced sympathy and signs of our mothers’ presence (I see that Coors Light truck, Mom). We talked life after death, and what it really means to grab life by the balls.

Since her mother’s death, my friend has cut eight inches off her hair (a bold move I typically advise against in times of sadness but fully support in moments of crippling, where-do-I-go-from-here heartache), nearly maxed out her credit card and — frankly — YOLO-ed hard.

Some might say she’s walking a fine line — trust me, I’ve been there (whaddup, impulse trip to London), and am paying for it now (Chase Bank: 1, Meaghan -$500) — but I say she’s living, and that’s all we can really do; That’s all we can really do when the world my friend and I are living in — a world without someone we’ve previously never known life without — is new to us.

(Moral of the story,) it’s all we can do when tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.

And so, I trade you last year’s slew of unkept New Year’s resolutions (I did not use that stairmaster; it has since become a scarf rack) for a lone vow:

Live.

Say yes. Say no. Wear flip flops to the grocery store mid-winter. Do you — and do it well because, as Slim Shady once said, you only get one shot.

Gin makes me a no-good, very bad, terrible person. (See also: an emotional trainwreck.) But — while it certainly doesn’t do much to help the cause — what I choose to drink doesn’t change the fact that I’ve always been a crier. It’s written in my DNA. Always has been, always will be.

(To those who choose to love me,
I am deeply sorry.)

For those who doubt me (or have simply never seen me bawl my eyes out in a public restroom), here’s a list of just some of the things that reduced me to tears this past year:

Burning my tongue on a tater tot last New Year’s Eve

Watching a friend get sworn in as a member of the Yonkers Fire Department

Getting Fireball in my eye not once, but twice

Celebrating our friend’s baby’s first birthday

Watching said baby unwrap a pair of child-sized Raybans

That time a drunk friend of mine called my Jewish co-worker Anne Frank

Finding out the sex of my beautiful friend’s baby

Seeing said mama-to-be open THESE TEENSY, TINY BABY JEANS:

Every time I was drunk and couldn’t find my phone

Every time I was drunk and couldn’t find my friend

Every time I was drunk and couldn’t find the Tums

Every 45 minutes at the annual benefit concert for my parents (see especially: when my best friend informed me via scribbled numbers on a bar napkin that we’d raised more than $10,000, and after that terribly unnecessary, complementary Jameson shot)

Because it was my best friend’s birthday

Because everyone was singing showtunes on the train

Because there was no more gin

Because the dentist made my front tooth faintly resemble the Liberty Bell

Because he felt bad and fixed it for free

Because I missed my mom

Because I missed my dad

Because I missed the train

FINALLY MEETING THIS BEAUTIFUL BABY GIRL:

Holding her mother in my arms for the first time post-giving life to a little human

Mom’s birthday, dad’s birthday, Christmas and Saint Patrick’s Day

My half-brother’s wedding

At least three episodes of Dancing with the Stars

The end of “Wild”

The end of “How to Train Your Dragon”

The end of “Parks and Recreation”

The entirety of “Inside Out”

Finding out a friend’s mom died at just 44 years old

That time we had no choice but to hitchhike in Cooperstown

THAT TIME MY CO-WORKER/LIFE PARTNER/DEAR FRIEND GIFTED ME A GROUPON FOR A 60-MINUTE DEEP TISSUE MASSAGE VIA G-MAIL WHILE I WROTE THIS PIECE

Since I’ll never really know how my mother — a once-terrible texter who died just months before Bieber’s first arrest — would’ve felt about his Billboard-confirmed comeback**, I’ve settled for the opinions of some other mothers.

One father was also surveyed, but he was just confused:

* She also seriously resented Robin Thicke, though she likely just thought he was his father.

Last November, 20 some-odd friends and I unfolded metal chairs around two beer pong tables, a snack tray and a music stand. We raised plastic cups of apple cider-sangria and cans of warm Rolling Rock while cheers-ing our inaugural Friendsgiving feast. Somewhere between

(A) under-cooking the sweet potatoes with my best friend and her off-the-boat Irish mother,

(B)ripping my dress at the waistline before a vaguely inappropriate grace, and

(C)Celine Dion karaoke,

I was once again mulled down by the giant hypothetical U-Haul-truck that’s been lugging around all the feelings I’ve been feeling (est. 1991) and all the thanks I have left to give.

I. Friends, family and cheesecake

I’m thankful for friends that still love and (somewhat) respect me even after I spent Thanksgiving Eve ’14 bawling my eyes out at the bar because “that bitch looked at me like I was fucking orphan Annie” (and for family that helped nurse the subsequent hangover). I’m thankful for our strong and powerful clan (not to be confused with cult, though that is–at times–an understandable mix-up), however small and occasionally petty. For friends that inspire me, challenge me, dance with me and actually like me. I’m thankful for the opportunity to be ticket #46 at a 45-person dinner at the home of my second family; the one that offered up their basement futon for a few daysweeks months because the odds were stacked against me and there was no one else sleeping on it at the time.

II. The 21st century/popular culture

I’m thankful for tights with built-in spandex, strapless bras, and pizza. For autocorrect, for auto-enhance, and for oversized sweatshirts. For self timers, red lipstick, cheap wine, and old My Chemical Romance (RIP). I’m thankful for bars that are also on boats, open bar wristbands, and all the open bar tabs that I remembered to close this year (pour some out for the ones that I left cold, alone and very much open while I stood in line for street corner falafel). I’m thankful that Snapchat is time-sensitive(unless you’re a dick), and that I didn’t die those two times I went to Delaware. I’m thankful for the Internet and the ability for someone’s words, thoughts, and ideas to go viral. I’m thankful for drugstores that still carry disposable cameras and for those few and far between moments we get all the girls in one picture. I’m thankful for dresses that photograph well and for Mexican street corn. For beards and booze and bars with Dirty Jenga. I’m thankful that Instagram version 6.4.0 finally allowed for edits (and therefore, for all of my emojis to fit on the same line).

#latergram

Also, for back-up hard drives and deep fried Oreos.

III. Amy Poehler

See also: tiring and taxing and often entirely thankless but, if Amy Poehler was able to birth a best-selling memoir while also filing for divorce, co-hosting the Golden Globes, and closing the book on a seven-season sitcom, I’m pretty sure I can pencil it in with throwing clean laundry on my freshly swept bedroom floor and burning every piece of toast I touch.

IV. Roommates

I’m thankful for roommates who are also my friends, i.e. roommates I want to come home to. I’m thankful for roommates who sit at the foot of my bed when I’m crying (and offer to call an ambulance because they’re boys and are new to the idea of panic attacks); roommates who splurge on a $15 tree from the 99 cent store across the street, even though the fake snow might just be asbestos; and roommates that don’t mind that said tree’s been up all year.

V. My lungs and legs

Coming from a family with an aggressive medical history (cancer loves us, what can I say?), my okay health is something I’m thankful for each year.

Plus, having not broken a body part since that bottle of Smirnoff helped shatter my kneecap in high school is something worth celebrating.

VI. My parents

Not only am I thankful for the time I had with these two beautiful humans but I’m also thankful for the subtle reminders they’re still here; like the time my phone buzzed to tell me that a band named “MOM” had followed me on Twitter, or the time I reached into my purse for a pen and pulled out a golf tee.

VII. Wordpress

Perhaps most of all, I am thankful for this platform. For the ability to (occasionally over-)share my thoughts (however self loathing and riddled with comma splices they may be) with readers who give somewhat of a shit*.

One being the time my six-year-old self, with both doe eyes fixed on the television, took a long-winded sip from my mother’s lukewarm Coors Light instead of my own Happy Meal Sprite. (Why she had a straw in her beer is something neither of us ever figured out.)

Apparently I wasn’t a fan.

Another, the scarring moment four-year-old me plummeted to the ground off a set of presumably high-end, Bermudian monkey bars. Later in life, my mother would say with a straight face, “I can’t believe that’s all you remember from that fucking trip.”

Apparently it was a nice one.

A third, in elementary school, when my mother confiscated my brand new Looney Tunes pencil case after discovering that I’d reported her to D.A.R.E. informants because she smoked Marlboros, not marijuana.

Apparently those little baggies were for buttons.

One of the hardest parts about losing both parents has been losing the memories that went with them. The stories I would ask to hear over and over again at thirteen, but couldn’t care less about come high school because I was a hormonal monster with a Myspace to manage.

The little things that only they took note of and either, A. never told me or, B. told me so long ago that it’s been excommunicated to the dark chamber of my brain where Math B is stored.

The ones I’m interested in now more than ever.

A good friend of mine just started a blog called, “From Russia, With Sarcasm.” In it, she plans to detail every thoughtful/embarrassing/life-molding moment from her immigrant childhood (and her parents’ coinciding immigrant parenthood) — a conquest, I admit, I am equal parts fond and jealous of.

Sure, there are the anecdotes that stuck — like how, to keep this pint-sized human off the couch, my mother would simply lay down the vacuum (a household object, I’m told, I was terribly afraid of), or how, come hell or high water, I would try and stick my tiny hands in the VCR (a household object I apparently was not).

Though, there will always be gaps.

There will always be gray areas because there will always be stories, whether proclaimed at dinner parties or published for the world to see, that haven’t been properly fact checked — some filled with unintentionally stretched versions of the truth (Was Mom a Grateful-Deadhead or did I dream that?) and others with sentences that could always be better.

Sentences that would benefit from said little things.

Take this piece, for example.

When did Mom first learn I was paralyzed by the vacuum?

Was I alarmed by any other inanimate objects?

Did I shriek in fear or lay fetal on the floor?

For a writer, these details (or the lack-thereof) can make or break a good piece. And, for someone still grieving, the missing pieces are just another reminder of how real a loss is.

So, like us writers usually do, we improvise (just like us grievers do with things like inherited debt and all that dreadful funeral paperwork we never knew existed).

If I was then, like I am now, fetal. Definitely fetal.

A friend recently informed me that I’ve been living below the poverty line.

Since blowing through my savings in a mere two-ish years on my own, I’ve had the nice, expensive Pursian rug pulled out from underneath me. The one that paved the way for lavish, week-long music festivals and all of the bar tabs I so heroically-and regrettably-offered to pay.

I’ve kicked the iTunes habit my stay-at-home mother so desperately begged me to curb in high school (she was less than thrilled that my father’s hard-fought-for pension was going towards things like the “1,2 Step” music video and the “Goofy Movie” soundtrack) and nixed my morning cappuccinos, all in hopes of keeping afloat — and finding the center in my checkbook.

In a world where there are college courses on wine (Cornell University), maple syrup (Alfred University) and even “The Art of Walking” (Centre College) — but none on being a self-sustainable human being, learning to cut the crap must, instead, come naturally (often on its own time).

And so, I present to you, Adulting 101: The Sparknotes edition.

1. That’s definitely mold. You should definitely do something about it.

2. Make sure you’re not paying part of the previous tenant’s cable bill because you more than likely definitely are.

3. Never read the comments section.

4. Check that tupperware before microwaving.

5. Tupperware is spelled “tupperware.”

6. The IRS doesn’t care that you also need to eat.

7. Open your mail.

8. No, seriously. Open your mail.

9. Never tell your dentist (pre-procedure) that you don’t care how it’s going to look.

10. Your DNA is on everything.

11. Snoozing “five more minutes” than you did yesterday, every day, will catch up to you and eventually get you fired — in the same way that those Seamless orders will come back to haunt your bank account.

12. APR stands for “annual percentage rate.”

13. Annual percentage rate has something to do with your credit cards.

14. Which you should have, apparently.

15. Say no if you want to.

16. Say yes if you want to.

17. Feel if you want to.

18. Snack if you want to.

19. Wine does not equal dinner and neither does air, even if it’s all you can afford at the moment.

20. A savings account is called a savings account for a reason.

21. If you use it like you would a checking account, your bank will (not so) politely threaten to strip it of said title.

Sometime this summer, I made the conscious and sober — though somewhat hungover — decision to go see “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” alone. To schlep to Atlantic Avenue in the pouring rain just so I could slouch down in the red, faintly itchy seats of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s modish movie theater and sob violently into the sleeve of my own dress at an Indie flick about a teenage girl who gets leukemia her senior year of high school.

In other words, to challenge a hypothetical freight train full of feelings to a game of chicken.

Mid-afternoon that gray Saturday, I informed two childhood friends of my conquest within the confines of a group chat most often reserved for double chin selfies and screenshots of texts we think are bitchy. Though both strongly encouraged that I “do me” and that it might be “oddly therapeutic” (one later retracted her statement and said it would have been “completely fucking masochistic” to sit through that movie alone), they both offered to keep me company if their schedules so allowed.

Soon, my friend Sarah and I were under one umbrella, en route to BAM for the 6:45 showing.

After walking two blocks too south (we grew up here, I swear) and reiterating not twice but three times to the concession stand clerk that we wanted butter on our colossal popcorn, we sat back, relaxed, and grew fond of a character we hoped hard wouldn’t die in the end.

Whether or not she did is neither here nor there.

Whether or not I kept my cool through the movie is also neither here nor there.

(I did not. I lost my shit.)

But, what is here and what is there is that, for the first time since losing both of my parents to cancer, a film about the disease did more than just remind me that other people’s loved ones can kick the bucket, too.

The dramedy, directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and based on the 2012 novel by Jesse Andrews of the same name (which, yes, I read after seeing the movie; please don’t let that be the only takeaway here), trails Greg Gaines — an awkward, self-loathing high school senior on “low-key good terms with everyone” — as he is forced by his “very Jewish, ex-hippie” mother to leave a life of coasting behind and befriend Rachel Kushner, the girl-next-door-with-terminal-cancer.

Towards the end of “Me and Earl,” a tattoo-clad history teacher tells a down-and-out Greg,

“Even after somebody dies, you can still keep learning about them. Their life, it can keep unfolding itself to you just as long as you pay attention to it.”

(This is the part of the film where I swan dive out of the way of said figmental freight train.)

In the almost-eight years since losing my father, I’ve uncovered more about him than I ever even thought to ask about when he was still around (turns out, he cooked kielbasa every other Sunday because — unbeknownst to me ’til 2010 — we’re a teensy, tiny bit Polish. Plus, he loved a good kielbasa).

In the two years since mom died, I’ve committed even more to memory (like her affinity for redheads and unique inability to part with old paperwork, no matter a 1993 postmark).

I’ve learned that my father never did live down dropping the ninth-inning, game-winning ball at a little league championship game and that he once grinned his way through dinner with one badly broken bone after sneaking out to play football. I’ve learned that, like me, mom enjoyed filling photo albums with vignettes of her and her girlfriends drinking wine from the jug and that, like me, she swore by to-do lists (many of which I’ve had the distinct pleasure of keeping).

I’ve grown to understand just why my father placed his closest friendships on a pedestal and just what it was about “Dancing WIth the Stars” that touched my mother so very deeply.

Moreover, I’ve learned that my mother’s parents — my grandmother dead 14 years and my grandfather long gone before I arrived — were everyday globetrotters. They lived life to the fullest up until their last respective breaths (and Loretta’s last seniors-only dance class).

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While I still have questions (like who are all the people in these boxes of old photos and WHICH ONE OF YOU WAS LICENSED TO FLY THAT FUCKING PLANE?!?), their lives have yet to stop unfolding.